Albert J. Nock Quotes - Page 2

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• The civilization of a country consists in the quality of life that is lived there, and this quality shows plainest in the things that people choose to talk about when they talk together, and in the way they choose to talk about them.

  Albert J. Nock

  Country, Civilization, People

  6 Copy quote

• Instead of recognizing the State as ‘the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men,’ the run of mankind, with rare exceptions, regards it not only as a final and indispensable entity, but also as, in the main, beneficent. The mass-man, ignorant of its history, regards its character and intentions as social rather than anti-social; and in that faith he is willing to put at its disposal an indefinite credit of knavery, mendacity and chicane, upon which its administrators may draw at will.

  Albert J. Nock

  Running, Character, Men

  10 Copy quote

• As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime.

  Albert J. Nock

  Drs, Crime, States

  "Our Enemy, the State" by Albert J. Nock (p. 50), 1935.

  13 Copy quote

• When politicians say "I'm in politics," it may or may not be possible to trust them, but when they say, "I'm in public service," you know you should flee.

  Albert J. Nock

  Liberty, May, Libertarian

  7 Copy quote

• It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another, there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

  Albert J. Nock

  Giving, Assumption, Social

  11 Copy quote

• The State always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society's advantage, but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage; nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy pressure, while its motion towards anti-social purposes is self-sprung.

  Albert J. Nock

  Moving, Self, Doe

  "Our Enemy, the State" by Albert J. Nock, (p. 51), 1935.

  14 Copy quote

• It is easy to prescribe improvement for others; it is easy to organize something, to institutionalize this or that, to pass laws, multiply bureaucratic agencies, form pressure groups, start revolutions, change forms of government, tinker at political theory. The fact that these expedients have been tried unsuccessfully in every conceivable combination for 6,000 years has not noticeably impaired a credulous unintelligent willingness to keep on trying them again and again.

  Albert J. Nock

  Agency, Government, Years

  12 Copy quote

• Considered now as a possession, one may define culture as the residuum of a large body of useless knowledge that has been well and truly forgotten.

  Albert J. Nock

  Culture, Useless, Body

  8 Copy quote

• The State did not originate in any form of social agreement, or with any disinterested view of promoting order and justice. Far otherwise. The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification of society permanently into two classes-an owning and exploiting class, relatively small, and a propertyless dependent class. . . . No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another.

  Albert J. Nock

  Views, Agreement, Order

  10 Copy quote

• It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935 the average individual's incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of the State is precisely what his attitude was toward the phenomenon of the Church in the year, say, 1500. It does not appear to have occurred to the Church-citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to the State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was that claimed his allegiance.

  Albert J. Nock

  Attitude, Average, Years

  11 Copy quote

• The competition of social power with State power is always disadvantaged, since the State can arrange the terms of competition to suit itself, even to the point of outlawing any exercise of social power whatever in the premises; in other words, giving itself a monopoly.

  Albert J. Nock

  Exercise, Giving, Competition

  18 Copy quote

• Driving jobholders out of office is like the old discredited policy of driving prostitutes out of town. Their places are immediately taken by others who are precisely like them.

  Albert J. Nock

  Taken, Office, Towns

  4 Copy quote

• The glossary of politics is so full of euphemistic words and phrases - as in the nature of things it must be - that one would suppose politicians must sometimes strain their wits to coin them.

  Albert J. Nock

  Phrases, Coins, Sometimes

  "Free Speech and Plain Language". The Atlantic Monthly, January 1936.

  4 Copy quote

• I have often wondered why the sounds of the beating drums do not make the marching soldiers shoot their officers and go home.

  Albert J. Nock

  Home, Soldier, Sound

  11 Copy quote

• Americans have a strange notion that the ordinary laws of economics do not apply to them. So doubtless they will think they are prosperous if the boom starts, and that deficits and indebtedness are merely signs of how prosperous they are.

  Albert J. Nock

  Thinking, Law, Ordinary

  7 Copy quote

• It would seem that in Paine's view the code of government should be that of the legendary King Pausole, who prescribed but two laws for his subjects, the first being, Hurt no man, and the second, Then do as you please.

  Albert J. Nock

  Hurt, Kings, Men

  "Our Enemy, the State" by Albert J. Nock, (p. 36), 1935.

  7 Copy quote

• As far as I know, I have no pride of opinion.

  Albert J. Nock

  Pride, Opinion, Knows

  4 Copy quote

• The only thing that the psychically-human being can do to improve society is to present society with one improved unit.

  Albert J. Nock

  Units, Humans, Can Do

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• The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.

  Albert J. Nock

  States, Testimony, Primitive

  "Our Enemy, the State" by Albert J. Nock, (p. 44), 1935.

  14 Copy quote

• Personal publicity of every kind is utterly distasteful to me, and I have made greater efforts to escape it than most people make to get it.

  Albert J. Nock

  People, Effort, Publicity

  "Memoirs of a Superfluous Man". Book by Albert J. Nock, 1943.

  4 Copy quote

• The worst of this ever growing cancer of Statism [ie big 'paternal' government - socialism, communism and fascism] is its moral effect. The country is rich enough to stand its frightful economic wastage for a long time yet, and still prosper, but it is already so poverty-stricken in its moral resources that the present drain will quickly run them out.

  Albert J. Nock

  Running, Country, Cancer

  7 Copy quote

• When a beggar asks us for a quarter, our instinct is to say that the State has already confiscated our quarter for his benefit, and he should go to the State about it.

  Albert J. Nock

  Benefits, Instinct, States

  8 Copy quote

• Above all things the mass-mind is most bitterly resentful of superiority. It will not tolerate the thought of an elite; and under a political system of universal suffrage, the mass-mind is enabled to make its antipathies prevail.

  Albert J. Nock

  Political, Mind, Mass

  "Memoirs of a Superfluous Man" by Albert J. Nock, (p. 88), 1943.

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps one reason for the falling-off of belief in a continuance of conscious existence is to be found in the quality of life that most of us lead. There is not much in it with which, in any kind of reason, one can associate the idea of immortality.

  Albert J. Nock

  Fall, Ideas, Quality

  7 Copy quote

• As a general principle, I should put it that a man's country is where the things he loves are most respected. Circumstances may have prevented his ever setting foot there, but it remains his country.

  Albert J. Nock

  Country, Men, Feet

  16 Copy quote

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